I spoke to Lee earlier today
and asked her about Lorrie Morgan. She said that many years ago Lorrie had
stated publically in an interview that she was a big fan of her husband, which
John was flattered by, since Lorrie's milieu was country music. However, they
didn't know each other; and no, she never asked him to record
the duet with her of "Little Snow Girl" on her Christmas
album.

Thanks so much for following this up with Lee Gary. Chip, you have solved the Little Snow Girl mystery regarding Lorrie's duet of that beautiful song with Andy Williams.

I have a theory as well about why Lorrie Morgan did not contact John Gary to record that duet of Little Snow Girl, though its just a guess and not based on any real first hand knowledge of the events.

Lorrie's career was pretty hot at the time and she even had a platinum album or two by the time she recorded that album. I'm guessing by her love of John Gary's records that she would have mentioned to her record label the possibility of doing that duet with John Gary, but I have a feeling that although John was a truly amazing singer of his generation, he was less well known than Andy Williams and perhaps for strictly commercial reasons they went with Mr. Williams instead.

Nevertheless, I think John Gary and Lorrie's voice would have been heavenly together and I think an opportunity was missed, even though the version with Mr Williams is beautiful in its own right.

Thanks so much for following this up Chip, its greatly appreciated. I have been playing that John Gary Christmas album repeatedly and I believe it to be one of the greatest Holiday albums of all time!

That's the most plausible theory, Steve. And one of the contributing factors to Andy being more well-known was the efforts of my cousin Nick (De Caro) who produced 3 of
the 12 albums that Andy had which reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Top 200 albums chart: Born Free (1967), Love, Andy (1967) and Honey (1968). Andy was a friend of the family, so I certainly don't begrudge Lorrie for choosing him. I just wish she had chosen another song to record with Andy, and had sung "Little Snow Girl" with John. By the way, if you want to learn more about my cousin Nicky's collaborations with Andy, I spoke about them in my In The Spotlight memorial tribute to Andy when he died in September 2012: click here.

I could not agree with you more about the choices that they should have made on Lorrie's Christmas From London album for the duets. It would have been great to hear her and Andy on one of the other cuts like My Favorite Things or Let It Snow or a remake of Andy's Its The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, which was not included on the album, and save the Little Snow Girl duet for Lorrie and Mr. Gary, whom voices I think would have been magnificent together.

I had almost forgotten that your cousin was the legendary arranger Nick De Caro, whose stellar orchestral arrangements have graced so many beautiful records by everybody from Dolly Parton to Neil Diamond if I am correct. I'm one of those people who always read the album credits on the back of Cd's and albums and learned early in life how important an arranger is when recording these great melodies and songs of popular music.

Michael Buble and Seth Mcfarlene in a great interview recently for the LA Times spoke of how critical the arrangers like Nelson Riddle were to the recordings of Frank Sinatra and how they were essentially the producer of the record and what a loss art it is today, the critical role of the music arranger. On Seth's new album of standards he puts the arranger's name on the front of the album to acknowledge his importance to the making of his current record, and of course Frank himself was noted for naming the songwriters and arrangers of each song he sang live in concert before performing the song.

Chip, thanks once again for having such amazing knowledge and contacts in this wonderful music business and all you have done to preserve and nurture it.

That's correct, Steve: Dolly Parton and Neil Diamond are two of the many recording artists that my cousin Nicky worked with over the years as either producer, arranger, songwriter, musician, backup singer, or a combination thereof. In fact, one of the Gold Records that he earned in his career was for Dolly's 1977 album, Here You Come Again. On this album, Nicky arranged the strings and voices for the album and was also one of Dolly's backup singers. In addition, my cousin Frank (Nicky's brother), who is also in the music business, was the contractor and coordinator for the album as well. So it was a real family affair. Another family affair was for Mel Carter's 1965 LP, Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, which Nick produced and wrote two of the songs for. In addition, my cousin Frank was the featured guitar player on the LP. The title song from this LP became a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (peaking at No. 8), and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.

By the way, Nicky was also a recording artist in his own right, having released a number of albums under his own name. Two of his most notable albums were Happy Heart (1969), which he recorded with his orchestra; and Italian Graffiti (1974), which featured his vocals.

As for my cousin Frank, he was a member
of the Baja Marimba Band (the sister group to Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass) in the late 1960s and early '70s; and then later he also became a producer/arranger for many recording artists. Among the many artists that Frank produced was Glenn Frey of the Eagles.

I don't have an artist list for Frankie, but posted below is a list of recording artists (in alphabetical
order) that Nicky worked with over the years as either producer, arranger,
songwriter, musician or backup singer: